Pookiablo

Nightwolf what is your budget exactly???

Dell are good, but if you're doing game stuff then I imagine you might need to fork a fair bit out. If you go for one of their all-round multimedia machine then I doubt you'd be disappointed! I bought a Dell XPS laptop from them 2 years ago and even now it runs like a beauty! 1920 x 1200 screen res for the win! Otherwise you could always try Mesh computers (dunno the website). They offer some pretty awesome systems and last time i checked, the prices weren't too bad either! My friend has bought many a PC from them and is always quite happy with them!

T'is very true - I've had lots of friends stay there and they've all banged on about how amazing it is. I used the underground service in Frankfurt earlier this year when I was living in Mainz but it was just beyond confusing - very poorly signposted and the only network maps I could find were on the actual platforms! It was still pretty speedy though!

Isn't this statement just as much a stereotype as the one this is in response to? Lol, sorry, I'm just being picky and annoying as usual....

He's only having a bit of fun - can't blame 'em for trying to provoke a bit of discussion! Probably, as generic as it is, Mario, as he's just godly. I use him in every single game except Smash Bros, in which my main man Ness takes to the stage. Ness is also pretty awesome though! Otherwise, I love DK, you just can't mess with the Donk!

"Experience is a hard teacher because she gives the test first, the lesson afterwards." - Vernon Sanders Law

Could you at least spell condom correctly?

Such a gentleman.

It's pretty good but it's absolutely rubbish compared to the French Metro in Paris - the frogs have truly got us beat there, they have trains arriving at platforms in less than a minute between each other. The underground in Madrid is also pretty good and much cleaner than in London. Is it me or is it really expensive if you don't have an oyster card? I swear a single trip in Zone 1 is like £4?

And where's mine??? Hmmmmmm!?!?!?

I know what you mean, women = lost on me - don't even get me started on my girlfriend and her belief that she's fat. The fact that I'm not particularly strong yet I can still benchpress her weight with ease suggests that she's indeed quite the opposite. (I would share it with you but she might rip off a part of my anatomy were she to find out!) On topic, I can drink a surprising amount before I get drunk and I've only ever been completely drunk twice. Not trying to big myself up, seeing as I don't know you people I'm not really that fussed what you think of me but it takes around 6 pints for me to start feeling the effects and I can go on to drink about 10 - 12 pints before I start to feel properly drunk as such. Saying that I don't drink so much anymore and my nights out seem to be a lot shorter than before. Give me wine and I can be drunk on two glasses sometimes, it's like my kryptonite! Surprisingly I don't drink as much as I used to in school, I remember a friday night could consist of 15 pints sometimes! I don't drink very often anymore though, as a) I'm older and b) I don't drink to get drunk - t'is a very pointless thing to do. I'm a bit of a big'un, 6'2 and about 83 kilos so that might explain why....

Amen Blood.

You sir make an excellent point. This is exactly what's wrong with gaming today and what was wrong with it back then! One of the major things which contributed to the success of the first Playstation was this adult "cool" image of the console that made all the 10 year olds think "Wow, it's for adults and all my friends want it, I'm a little douchebag who now needs one for no other real reason". Okay, so that's not entirely accurate, plus things like price and library of games were more important. Either way people are attracted to things for certain reasons. I remember FMVs were used to death as a selling point, so much so that people actually started to believe that Playstation had amazing, superior graphics to anything else on the market. The same thing is true of 360 and PS3 today - everyone who's stupid enough to argue about them online just rabbits on about the amazing graphics they have - it's very rare I see a discussion in which someone argues one has better gameplay or someone argues along a more similar line of better audio. Surely, audio is very important too? Graphics play too important a role in gaming today but then it's easy to see why - graphics are what are increased the most between each gaming generation. I blame the last generation in particular for that perception - as all the consoles just offered what the N64/PS2 did but with better graphics. No innovation whatsoever. When it comes to graphics I'm a bit weird - I adore the blocky imperfection that many N64 games had back in the day - the idea of a super realistic 1080p HDR Mario is cringeworthy. Games don't need good graphics to be good games, but graphics obviously do help. Thankfully, many Wii games are helping to break down the perception that graphics are the sole driving force of any game. A good example would be, Half Life 2 - A game very big on substance but which also provides a great visual experience and Unreal Tournament 3 - awesome graphics but not very much else. Epic, you are forgiven though as Gears of War was godly.

You're right, there's a load of decent stuff in the game - I really do like the challenges screen, gives the game more purpose I find! And character-specific target smash stages would have been great as the ones in Melee really did seem very inventive (Young Link's stage was particularly good!). It's a shame as I would have loved to have seen a return of the infamous "Board The Platforms!!!" from the first game. Then again, I suppose all the platforming bits in SSE act as a pretty good substitute for that. I need to start playing the game with friends offline more and then I reckon it'll be a whole lot more fun, as I won't be getting my panties in a twist about lag. The biggest problem I have there is no one else I know has the game and there's only one other guy who plays it with me anyways (he's pretty amazing too, he's won a few FFAs with some of the chaps on here!). If I can convince people to play and get good at it (so that they want to play some more) then I imagine the fun factor will increase even more. I suppose my criticism is slightly harsh in parts because it was the online mode that I was most looking forward to and obviously, that's where I've had the most disappointment. Still, I can't knock the fact that, despite all the lag etc., I've still had the chance to play some absolutely epic games with some of you guys on here, many of whom live miles and countries apart from me! *waits for everyone to "Awww!"*

Well, I've had Brawl just under a month now and I thought I'd give my opinion on the game. Although there's loads which is excellent about the game, there's a surprisingly large amount which is bad, which really did stop this being the perfect game for me. Love all the offline modes, options, character selection too. Stages are undoubtedly the best yet, some real inventive stuff going on there. Love the idea of cooperative play, it does make the Subspace Emissary a whole lot more fun, speaking of which, is also a good laugh but was a bit underwhelming in parts. Some stages stand out, some really don't....the story is also one of the stupidest things ever. They could have paid me £20 and I could have come up with something that at least made sense. Obviously, it's all about the multiplayer which is a barrel of laughs with friends. The most serious flaw with the game is the online mode - no matter what Nintendo says to justify it, I don't care, it's just pure and simply completely broken. I've never played a match, in which I've not had at least a tiny bit of lag, and I've used it on all sorts of different connections. I know, Brawl has a lot more data pumping through it than your standard game but I'm sure this mode could have been improved, which is a shame as it's what I was most looking forward to. The online interface is also absolutely dreadful and the whole thing just really does fail in comparison to Mario Kart, which although not perfect, is a much smoother, better-developed online product. The fact that it takes me up to 10 minutes in some cases just to find people to play with in Basic Brawl, only for it then to lag like a motherfucker, makes me think that Nintendo believe it to be perfectly acceptable to take people's money and provide a half-assed service - not a very good thing to do to your customer base when your console is leading for the first time in 10 years. Although it's not possible given the amount of money it'd cost, Brawl really does seem like a game that needed dedicated servers to run seamlessly. Maybe taking some stuff out of the game may have helped this problem? I do love the option to customise one's control settings but is it just me or is the a game a bit over sensitive in parts? Sometimes you press the A button and it just goes into rapid-fire mode and the fiddly nature of the controls seems to make me do attacks that I didn't actually want to do. Perhaps, it's just me being an old timer, or the frustration of doing-said wrong attacks has caused my controller's quality to deteriorate as frustration has lead me to throwing my Wavebird against many a wall (don't even get me started on the online lag!!!). I have grown quite accustomed to the air dodge, which, was absolutely dreadful in Melee due it's jump-nerfing ability, but now acts as a very, very useful move. Love the music, best in any game ever. Graphics are very good but not great and I don't think they're the best on Wii - that award goes to Mario Galaxy but the game is very frantic, fast-paced and I've only seen the frame rate ever drop once and for very understandable reasons. Will I still playing this game next year? Definitely. Will I still be playing in the year after that? Most probably. Don't get me wrong, it's a great game and I put it miles above Melee, but I just wish Nintendo could release a patch and fix all the stuff that they got wrong. Yes they did a better job than I could ever do but then the point is, I'm technically paying them for making it for me to use. Whereas some areas have been so polished with Mr. Sheen that they burn your retinas because of the super glossy shine, others have been lucky just to been spit-rubbed semi-clean. It really is a shame.... I was playing the original with a friend last night and that reminded me why I love Smash Bros. so much! I know nostalgia and memories can cloud your judgement when it comes to remembering great games but despite it's simplicity - 64 got it all right for me, regardless of the awful graphics, lack of game modes whereas Brawl promised the world but only gave me a few continents. My friend even said that it requires more skill than Brawl and I'm actually inclined to agree! What's everyone else's positives and negatives of the game? Anyone found something to be so rubbish that it's marred the game for them? Oh and btw, Coin Launcher FTW!

I imagine it's through the challenges mode as they're probably the rare ones! I've been working on mine but I'm hardly anywhere, saying that I've had the game less than a month!

For me, wasps are one of the most evil things in the world - one summer I got stung 4 times by wasps. Two of those stings were simultaneous as I stood on two at the same time! Otherwise, I'm a bit shakey with heights.

Hard Working People looks so quirky and bizarre but for some reason I'm drawn to it, looks awesome!

Somebody give this guy a medal for writing the funniest sarcastic post I've read in weeks, so funny because it's just so true! Chris the great, you really are great!

Haha, her voice really did grate on me - I was literally about to suggest her too. Other people who need a good smacking round the cannister are.... 1) The idiot who invented tripping in Smash Bros 2) Mugabe 3) Solitanze (the guy who commented on absolutely every n-europe article quoting made up statistics and offering his "guarantees" - I'd like to guarantee a broken nose!) 4) The two little kids on the recent Somerfield's TV adverts - I'd smack 'em for six when they're as annoying as that.

That video made me say exactly the same thing as Danny lol. I hate the lil buggers - I remember one summer stepping on two barefoot at the same time. I was in agony!

I think it just depends on the type of game - Madden and Pro Evo for example are not art, just as watching a Premier League match on the telly isn't art. I suppose you would have to say that games contain artistic elements more than they do represent art themselves. Some games, you could argue are art though - it really depends on the game and how you look at it. For example, what category would you put Mario Kart Wii in? Art, game or something completely different altogether? You can argue these things in so many ways depending on how you look at it. In reference to the article - I personally thought it was awful. The person who wrote it just seemed like they were high on LSD or something at the time, mainly because it was just a splurge of pointless "ideas", rather than a cohesive discussion. Sorry to belittle someone's work, it's not really like me, but it was a very disappointing article I found.

Happy Birthday dude, have a good one!

Real Ale is awesome. Lager is the foul stuff, even if you think that price determines quality. If I wanted fizzy piss, I'd take a whizz in cup and add 4 parts water. As for drinking to get drunk, I don't aim to get drunk but I do find a few pints can help you relax a bit and have fun. I have a couple of friends who, despite claiming they're champions of handling their drink, usually seem to end up stumbling all over the place, and moreover, let the testosterone take over and try acting big and tough (one guy in particular likes to pick fights, starts "jokingly" shoving people around and dishes out poor insults - only for him to then get angry and storm off when someone quite easily shows him up). At the dear age of 21, and having had 3 years of University life so far, I'm not afraid to say that on many an evening I've thought it wise to have the odd coke inbetween drinks just to freshen myself up and enjoy the evening more. Anyone who tells you it's "lame" or "it's for pussies" or otherwise is quite simply a twat. And needless to say, we all get very drunk at times and I'm no stranger to that, but providing you don't ruin anyone's night (or even your own) then it's all okay I suppose! I just worry about violence really, nothing worse than going to some of my locals in Reading and having tanked-up lager lads thinking they need to prove a point to me. They don't need to start a fight for me to think they're an idiot as it is.

Hahahaha, awesome. Not too fussed about the graphics - to be honest Twilight Princess did not impress me in the graphics department, the only exception was the top part of the castle where you fight a certain infamous creature. The style there was awesome. Providing they do a good job of making it immersive then I have no qualms. Above all, I just want it to be fun and hopefully a bit fresher. Twilight Princess was indeed awesome, but it did make me think when playing it that it was just more of the same. A new direction might do the series some good you never know. Phantom Hourglass for example, was an excellent entry in the series when it came to innovation and fun!